Does your company get value for money from Pittcon?

Monday, 23 March 2015 at 8:32:AM

Pittcon is touted by the organiser as “The World's Largest Annual
Conference and Exposition for Laboratory Science”. That may still be
true, but one thing is undeniable – it’s not nearly as big as it used to
be.

The attendance stats for Pittcon only go back to 2008, but it’s
well-known that attendance is only about 50% of what it was in its 1990s heyday. This hardly comes as a surprise in an era when there are so
many more ways of getting your product information than by wearing out
the carpet at international conference facilities.

Does this
matter? Maybe it does, but perhaps we shouldn’t be too ready to jump to
conclusions based on simplistic ROI metrics. After all, going back to
those attendance stats, we see that although the number of exhibitors
has fallen off a bit in recent years, attendance at the scientific
sessions (‘conferees’) has held steady.

This is understandable.
As people become more willing – and able – to spend time researching a
product themselves before they buy, it makes sense that they also place a
higher value on solid scientific evidence on instrument application and
performance.

This certainly ties in with my experience from
Pittcon this year, where we had a good interaction with our six scientific posters, and some great conversations with visitors to our
booth. Not only that, but it’s my impression that the proportion of
high-quality leads we get from Pittcon is on the rise. This is important
because it doesn’t take many instrument sales to recoup the cost of
attending Pittcon.

And there are other, non-measurable benefits
from attending these events – from enhancing our company profile, to the
making and renewing personal contacts. Indeed, being able to meet with
lots of people all under one roof is cited as one of the top 10 reasons to exhibit at Pittcon. For that reason, it remains a great place to
connect with customers, distributors and media representatives, in a way
that simply isn’t possible with many of the smaller niche conferences
and seminars that we attend. So do we still get value for money
from Pittcon? Yes – if you’re prepared to look beyond the stats and
consider the value to people. That, after all, is what our business is
all about.

Massimo Santoro

Massimo Santoro is Technical Marketing
Director at Markes, having joined the company in 2014 following over 20
years’ experience at PerkinElmer and ThermoFisher Scientific. In his
role at Markes, he is kept busy developing strategies for the launch of
new products and in managing a wide variety of promotional activities
for Markes’ TD and TOF portfolios. Massimo is also a Pittcon ‘regular’ –
this is his 8th year!

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